When, in the Course of Human Events

by: Kim Weissman
July 8, 2001

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments
are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of
the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

That was the theory. So after 225 years, what happened? What happened is that
Independence Day, now almost universally known simply as "The Fourth of July"
(let's have no unpleasant reminders of exactly what it is that we are celebrating on that
particular day in July), is just another day to take off work, have a backyard barbecue,
fly flags, and entertain ourselves by shooting off fireworks. Or rather, sit and watch as
professionals hired by our local government officials shoot off fireworks, because we are
too stupid and too incompetent to be allowed to do so ourselves.

Thomas Jefferson, largely responsible for writing the words of the Declaration of
Independence, was an obvious hypocrite because despite his glowing prose, he continued to
own slaves throughout his life, and had a child out of wedlock with one of his slaves. The
Founders believed, according to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, that blacks were
"so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to
respect…".

The founding generation were just a bunch of greedy white guys who really launched the
revolution in order to preserve their upper class privilege and keep the rest of the
"lower classes" under foot.

The American flag "…represents the former colonies that enslaved our
ancestors…and when this flag was designed, they did not have [black people] in
mind", according to a Tennessee state legislator who refuses to join her fellow
legislators in pledging allegiance to the American flag at opening sessions of the
Tennessee State legislature. According to a prominent black media commentator, the words
of the Pledge of Allegiance are "nothing but a lie, just a lie", and expecting
blacks to recite the Pledge of Allegiance is "ridiculous".

James Madison, the so-called "father of the Constitution", really stole all
of his ideas from the noble Iroquois Confederation of Indians.

And the United States of America, the nation created by all that subterfuge and
deception, is destroying the planet through our pollution, robbing poor nations through
our over-consumption of raw materials, threatening to destroy the world through our
aggressive militarization, seriously misguided in our arrogantly nationalistic refusal to
accept the enlightened direction and leadership of our European "betters", and
is generally the root of all evil in the world.

All of that is what the elitists who rule us believe, and what they try to pass off as
"education" to our children. If a child graduates from the public school system
with an utter loathing of his nation, and in complete ignorance about his heritage, his
Constitutional rights, and his civic responsibilities, the public education system
considers that to be a resounding success. And very successful the system has been, by
that definition. We are all by now familiar with the surveys detailing the monumental
ignorance of our supposedly "educated" youth — and most of the rest of us
as well — regarding the Constitution, our form of government, and our heritage.

A survey of adults two years ago revealed that only half of those surveyed would vote
to ratify the Constitution today, although since the vast majority (83%) also admit that
they know very little or nothing about what it is they would be voting for or against, one
has to wonder about the meaning of that percentage. And if the citizens of our modern
American society — peopled by individuals who increasingly depend on government to
take care of them and protect them from all risk in life — were asked to put their
names to the Declaration of Independence today, how many of us would actually be willing
to "mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor"
in order to declare our independence from oppression?

Proposals were made several years ago for school children to recite the first two lines
of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence along with their Pledge of
Allegiance, and those proposals were met with outrage from school administrators and much
of the general public alike, many of whom called those phrases, and the entire Declaration
of Independence itself, racist, sexist, exclusionary, outmoded, a secular prayer, a plot
calculated to teach fascism, and a stealth attempt to introduce "conservative
values" (horrors!) into schools. Suggestions were made to "reword" those
phrases to make them more politically correct, and the idea that government authority is
dependent on the consent of the governed was too dangerous to be taken seriously. After
all, if children actually began to understand that under our form of government, ordinary
citizens are supposed to be in charge, rather than government officials, they might take
the next sentence seriously also: "That whenever any form of government becomes
destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new government…".

Such an idea is anathema to the elitists who run our government, most of our
institutions, and who would run our lives for us if they could. But Jefferson went even
further. He wrote not merely about the rights of the people, but about their duties as
well:

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same
object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right,
it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for
their future security."

Our elites do not want people to understand what our Founders actually intended: that
the founding documents of our republic established the people as superior to their
government, and that our national government is extremely limited in what it is permitted
to do. The freedom announced by our Declaration of Independence, and our rights which
defend that freedom, as specifically protected by our Bill of Rights (without which many
states would have refused to ratify the Constitution), are not granted to us as licensed
privileges by a benevolent government. That freedom was won and protected through
extraordinary sacrifice. Our rights are inherent and "unalienable", and it was
the intention of the Founders that our government dare not interfere with them. It is we
who set the rules, in our Constitution, by which our government must abide. But that is a
relationship that few of our fellow citizens still understand, and that our overlords in
Washington are striving mightily to reverse. And they are succeeding with, sadly, the
connivance of most of us.

Our Constitution is not a self-enforcing document. It requires the
constant attention and devotion of all citizens. The story is told that upon exiting the
Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin was asked what sort of government had been
created. He is said to have answered, "A republic, if you can keep it." A
Constitutional republic is not merely founded upon the consent of the people, it is also
totally dependent for its continued existence upon the active and informed
involvement of the people who live under that Constitution.

Imagine some magical reincarnation in which some of the luminaries of our founding
generation were suddenly again in our presence. It is our responsibility to tell them how
their great experiment is faring. How have their posterity guarded the liberties that they
sacrificed so much to protect? Perhaps the first thing to strike them would be the
startling ignorance among the public about the fundamentals of their own
form of government. Thomas Jefferson might lament that "If a nation expects to be
ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will
be." James Madison would agree, "It is certainly very material that the true
doctrines of liberty, as exemplified in our Political System, should be inculcated on
those who are to sustain and may administer it." And he would wonder why those
"true doctrines of liberty" are ignored, even denigrated, by our educational
system.

The concept of the "consent of the governed" has been turned on its head by
our modern legislators, such as Senator Charles Schumer, who thinks it is a conservative
plot for the judicial branch to constrain congress from doing whatever it wants to do. The
role of the courts is specifically to constrain congress, on the basis of what the
Constitution allows the congress to do. The Constitution sets the limits of the
power that we, the people, have consented to give to congress. Yet those limits are
constantly ignored. And how have those "true doctrines of liberty", and those
specific "unalienable rights" guarded by the Bill of Rights, fared?

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech and association, including, especially,
the right to criticize the government. But not if Senator McCain and his cohorts get their
way. With the excuse of reforming campaigns, they will criminalize people who band
together to criticize what they do. Does anyone really think that the men who drafted the
First Amendment expected that it would allow government to penalize
people for speaking out about the political issues of the day? "I remain baffled that
this Court has extended the most generous First Amendment safeguards to filing lawsuits,
wearing profane jackets, and exhibiting drive-in movies with nudity, but has offered only
tepid protection to the core speech and associational rights that our Founders sought to
defend." — Justice Clarence Thomas, dissent in Federal Election Commission v.
Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee; June 25, 2001.

The Second Amendment is irrelevant if you're an ordinary citizen seeking to protect
yourself and your family from the violent thugs in society; and if you seek to defend
yourself with deadly force from violent attack, you will likely be prosecuted because you
didn't abandon your home to the thugs, even at the risk of your life.

The Fourth Amendment won't protect you from intrusion if you say or believe things that
some bureaucrat considers "out of the mainstream", your home will be declared a
"compound", and the exercise of your right of self-defense will be considered
dangerous and countered with overwhelming force. Your houses, papers, and effects can be
seized if some bureaucrat thinks you may have committed a crime, and the burden is on you
to prove your innocence.

The Fifth Amendment will protect your home if you're a bird or a fish or a rat. But if
you're a private landowner who happens to own land which some bureaucrat or
environmentalist wants, your property will simply be taken away.

The Tenth Amendment...forget it, it no longer exists. The Supreme Court has said so.

"If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the
Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in
the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation;
for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary
weapon by which free governments are destroyed."
— George Washington;Farewell Address(September 19, 1796)

The above article is the
property of Kim Weissman, and is reprinted with his permission. Contact him prior to reproducing.